Thunder Force on Netflix: Huge letdown

The only reason why I bothered with this one is because it was a superhero film that appeared to be making fun of superhero films - which is something I always enjoy because I absolutely hate the fact that Marvel and DC dominate the cinemas worldwide and almost none of their films are original nor are they anything other than the usual predictable crap.

I thought that because Melissa McCarthy was the star of this thing that it would be a laugh riot because she normally brings a lot of that to the table such as in her performance in Spy which to this day remains one of my favorite comedies of the past decade or so - probably because it was an action film taking the piss out of action films.

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The movie begins with the world being somewhat terrorized with creatures (and I don't even remember the name they have for them) that have superpowers and it appears as though all of them use these power for evil. The regular police forces are unable to deal with this so a researcher named Emily Stanton (Octavia Spencer) has developed a system of giving super-powers to regular people. She had intended to use the serum on herself but the arrival of a elementary school friend, who has become a bit of a F**kup in life visits her, and accidentally injects herself with the serum, thus giving her half of the powers that had been designed to be put into just one person.

Lydia Berman (Melissa McCarthy) is this person and she gets given the powers of super-strength and invulnerability, leaving the invisibility side of things (the other superpower) to be injected into her childhood friend Emily, who has been working on the serum for 20 years.

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They get some suits and then go on to try to rid Chicago of bad guy superhero crime that is lead by a duo of The King (Bobby Cannavale) and The Crab (Jason Bateman.) They also have a female henchman called Laser who is more powerful than both of them combined but for some reason doesn't try to lead them (this is never explained.)

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Unfortunately, hilarity does NOT ensue. The jokes are heading down a Chris Farley path with Melissa McCarthy in that a lot of the humor is self-deprecating about how she is chubby and the strange romance between her and "The Crab" was probably meant to be hilarious but it is just cringe and dumb.

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Although I think that Bateman does a good job in his role, because he is a fantastic actor, the fact that his character sucks just as bad as everyone else's in this film definitely isn't his fault.

Also, there are no twists and it follows the exact same path that you would expect from a superhero film with nothing out of the ordinary happening at all. Everyone lives, nothing particularly special happens, and of course the good guys win. I suppose this shouldn't be a surprise for anyone, since nearly every superhero film follows this exact same course eventually, but I guess you could say I was hoping for more.

Normally a trailer can suck me into a bad film but even that trailer is bad and honestly, I would be willing to bet that we could get a room full of people, show them just the trailer and then tell them to write how they think the story will proceed and I would bet good money that they would get 75% of it correct.

I don't know how much money they spent on this film because Netflix is really secretive about this but I am sure it was quite a bit because the CGI is the real star of this show - just like almost every other superhero film that has been made in the past 20 years.

Should I watch it?

It is really amazing to me that the top 4 actors signed on for this because I believe all of them to be very talented actors and actresses. This film, despite having an all-star cast is just a turd and one of the worst super-hero films, comedies, or really any type of film I have seen in 2021... probably well beyond that. If it hasn't been clear from the words I have already written here, this film should be avoided and you should go do or watch just about anything else in lieu of wasting time one this awful movie.